East Tennessee Awakening revival planned for Rogersville

ROGERSVILLE — Kingsport evangelist D.R. Harrison has erected a 1,500-seat tent in Rogersville to begin what will be called the East Tennessee Awakening on July 8.

Since a dramatic conversion to Christ three years ago, Harrison is preaching several times each week across the country from Florida to Canada. Last year, he was invited in the spring to hold a revival at Greystone Free Will Baptist Church in Greeneville, which outgrew the church after eight weeks and moved into a tent donated to the evangelist. A farmer provided his farm on a remote cow pasture in Chuckey for the location. The revival lasted 30 weeks into mid-November, and 1,000-plus people were recorded coming to Christ in addition to many other miracles happening.

Since extended revivals are not common in our nation any longer, what was called the Greeneville Awakening was picked up by CBN News, reported in Charisma Magazine, and the last few months’ services were broadcast on international BPN radio to more than 37 foreign nations. Brian Lester, another member of the Voice of Hope team, reports Harrison’s website has been viewed more than three million times in the last 75 days.

Harrison gave credit for the revival’s success to those attending that came back to the tent nightly at midnight and prayed for hours. Wooden benches which were called altars were filled with names of individuals who were the targets of many of these prayers, and night after night it was evidenced friends would invite those people, who attended and accepted Christ. Sometimes the person inviting their friend would then let the friend mark a line through their name, meaning that prayer had been answered.

Dylan Bailey, a young man “called to become a preacher” during the revival, stated, “We saw people from their 40s through their 80s coming to make commitments to Christ.”

Rev. David Harrison is D.R. Harrison’s dad. The elder Harrison has been in ministry for the last 47 years and now travels with his son as field director for Voice of Hope Ministries. After cold weather closed the Greeneville meetings in November, the two Harrisons began promoting what they called Awakening Revival Rallies in churches wherever they would be invited on Friday and Saturday nights. David Harrison said, “This has become a way to test the waters to see if there is enough response to think a tent revival would be successful in their community.”

In a single service in Rogersville on Feb. 15, people from 31 churches packed inside Faith Assembly Church on Hwy. 11-W, with 42 people giving their lives to Christ. A week of meetings was scheduled in April, ending at the Rogersville Methodist Church, seeing a total of 107 people coming to Christ leading the Harrisons to feel Rogersville would be the next location for the tent.

Henard’s Chapel Baptist Church provided a prime 81-acre piece of property on 11-W just three miles west of town and the tent was erected on June 8. David Harrison will hold two weeks of services before the revival begins, both training workers and counselors and getting people primed for what could explode into a regional transformation.

D.R. Harrison stated, “We believe Rogersville could be many times what we saw in Greeneville.” He said this has nothing to do with denominations. “In Greeneville, members from every denomination attended. Some nights we had members of more than 75 churches attending and people drove in from 40 different states. What happens in Rogersville is up to God, but we believe God is saying this could be where things explode to become a true regional awakening.”

The Harrisons said they need to borrow three campers to use on the Awakening site for team members to use during the revival. More information can be found at the Voice of Hope website, www.vohministries.org